Class Day 2010 - Page 1

Find Comfort in the Exquisite Discomfort
By Ariel Eckblad

She told me I was going to Spelman. I told her she was insane. Call it ignorance, arrogance, or some sick mixture of the two, but I looked my mother in her face and told her she was insane. It would be easy for me to dismiss this as rudeness compounded with immaturity. It would be easy for me to give you the background story and hope that this would rationalize that which is beyond rationalization.

I could tell you I was young. I could tell you I had been accepted into Yale, Columbia, Harvard, and Georgetown, wanted to be a senator, and felt the only way to become one was with a diploma from Yale. I could tell you that I was a brat who had been raised to be an autonomous, self confident being and thus I thought I knew everything. But if I told you any of that, I would be minimizing that which is monumental. The reality--- this comment was precipitated by something much deeper, much more perverse, and much more powerful. This comment was precipitated by fear---a fear of discomfort.

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